On June 25th, Jorge Toledo, the EU Ambassador to China, issued a “30-day ultimatum” to China in Beijing, demanding that China resolve the issue of rare earth magnet exports to the EU.
To achieve his goal, he also disclosed that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, plans to visit China next month. The implication is that if we do not follow through, Von der Leyen’s visit to China next month may be put on hold.
The EU is in urgent need of rare earths
In recent years, the words of EU leaders in public have always been tinged with a hint of anger and helplessness. Especially in the face of China’s dominant position in rare earths and key raw materials, Europe seems to have always felt a kind of “constrained” pressure.
It can be said that the EU is extremely anxious in the face of China’s rare earth export control measures. The EU Ambassador to China, Tolle, once frankly stated that the rare earth reserves of EU enterprises are running out and they urgently need China’s supply to maintain production.
As the president of the European Commission, von der Leyen also expressed her dissatisfaction with China’s “weaponization of rare earths” at the G7 summit, claiming that China deliberately restricted rare earth exports in an attempt to influence the global market in this way.
Von der Leyen also took the stage with a magnet prop and passionately stated that China’s actions have distorted global trade rules and posed a major threat to the global supply chain. She even called on G7 member states to jointly address this “non-market policy and behavior”.
However, von der Leyen’s performance did not receive the expected response. The United States reacted coldly to it, and the joint statement did not even mention the rare earth issue, as if her words had not resonated with the international community at all.
In fact, as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun pointed out, it is actually the European Union, not China, that provides subsidies to enterprises.
To stimulate its domestic economy, the European Union plans to provide over 1.44 trillion euros in subsidies to European enterprises from 2021 to 2030. By 2024, the actual subsidies issued have exceeded 300 billion euros.
Even so, European enterprises still cannot compete with Chinese ones and instead attribute the blame to China. This is obviously unfair.
In fact, the trade gap between China and Europe has been widening in recent years. Since 2017, China’s economy has continued to grow by 40%, but the EU’s exports to China have dropped by 30%.
In particular, in the first five months of 2025, China’s trade surplus with the European Union increased by 23%, reaching a staggering 117 billion US dollars, setting a new record. These reflect that China has a more diverse range of products and can better meet the demands of the European market.
Under the leadership of von der Leyen, the European Union has frequently adopted a policy towards China that is in line with that of the United States. In many cases, it even goes along with the sanctions imposed by the United States, using China as a tool to please the United States.
